Helicopter hard landing kills Marine at Camp Lejeune Thursday September 3rd, 2015 at 12:12 PM
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Civilian deaths claimed in 71 US-led airstrikes on Isisby Alice Ross in London
Spokesman for US Central Command says many of the allegations of fatalities have been dismissed or cannot be verified
The US-led coalition bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has been described as the “most precise ever”, has received allegations that civilians have been killed in 71 separate air raids.
A spokesman for US Central Command (Centcom) disclosed the claims in an interview with the Guardian. Many of the claims have been dismissed but he said 10 incidents were the subject of fuller, formal investigations.
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CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter came down hard during training exercise Wednesday night
Vice President Joe Biden told a roundtable in Davie, Florida on Thursday that it was a “totally legitimate argument” that sanctions relief will enable Iran to “do more of the bad things they’re doing now” like fund terrorism and destabilize the Middle East.
The relief as part of the nuclear agreement reached in July totals roughly $100 billion. Iran funds Hezbollah and Hamas, among other terrorist groups, and is the world’s leading sponsor of terror.
Biden, while defending the deal to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) and a group of Jewish supporters, addressed the financial benefits for Iran as a result of the agreement.
“Well, Joe, even if I believed you were able to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, you’re going to give them a whole lot of money, Joe Boy!” Biden said with a laugh. “And they’re going to go out and do more of the bad things they’re doing now, do it more efficiently and threaten our friends in an existential way because they’ll have so much more money and capacity. Totally legitimate argument and concern.”
The post Biden: ‘Totally Legitimate Argument’ That Iran Can Use Sanctions Relief to Fund Terrorappeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
The recently completed nuclear deal with Iran will only strengthen the Islamic regime in the coming years and make it more difficult to punish Tehran for violations of the accord, a former British defense minister told the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday.
Liam Fox, currently a Conservative member of Parliament, said in an interview that the United States and Western countries are surrendering their leverage against Iran by granting it as much as $150 billion in sanctions relief, in exchange for modest restrictions on its nuclear program. Tehran will use the cash infusion to quickly upgrade its military and civilian infrastructure, he said.
The United States and other world powers caved into several Iranian demands during the nuclear negotiations, he said, including the eventual lifting of embargoes on the shipment of conventional arms and ballistic missiles into Tehran.
“This isn’t so much a deal as the fulfillment of an Iranian wish list,” he said.
Iran’s terrorist proxies and partners in the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the Assad regime in Syria, all stand to benefit from the sanctions relief under the nuclear pact, he said. The Obama administration has defended the deal in part by saying that Iran will devote most of the extra funding toward reviving its moribund economy, and that Tehran already siphoned resources to its proxies despite the previous economic restrictions.
Fox called this an “extremely optimistic if not utterly perverse view of the world.”
“If they regarded them as so much of a priority that they were willing to fund them when they had little money, I think it’s reasonable to assume that they will get the same level of priority amongst that new funding,” he said.
“We had leverage that we have just thrown away.”
Fox also said the notion that Western countries will be able to “snapback” sanctions in the event that Iran breaks the agreement is misguided. Governments will be reluctant to cut off their domestic businesses from potential profit opportunities in Iran, especially after long-term contracts have already been signed.
Philip Hammond, Britain’s foreign secretary, recently said there was a “huge appetite” for U.K. businesses to invest in Iran after Britain reopened its embassy in the country following the deal. Britain had closed the embassy in 2011 after Iran expelled its ambassador and protesters rioted in the compound, smashing windows and burning British flags.
“As Western countries start getting more and more involved commercially with Iran, it becomes more and more difficult for their governments to persuade their own industries, that having committed themselves contractually and in terms of time, that they should do away with any potential profits because we want to re-impose sanctions,” Fox said.
“This great faith in this snapback I don’t share.”
After the nuclear deal lapses in about a decade, he said, Iran will find itself with a much shorter breakout time toward a nuclear bomb, billions in unfrozen assets, and additional profits from the resumption of oil and gas exports. Unless the Iranian leadership changes significantly, that could lead to the regional instability the Obama administration says it is attempting to prevent.
“They’ll be in a much stronger position should they decide after 10 years, that there’s no real change in Iranian society, they will thumb their nose at the international community” and pursue a nuclear weapon, he said.
Even if Congress votes to disapprove the Iran nuclear deal this month, Obama is expected to have enough support to sustain a veto of that resolution, meaning the agreement would proceed.
Fox also discussed other global security issues, including challenges posed by Russia and the Islamic State (IS). He said he was dismayed that the Obama administration had not yet decided whether to arm Ukrainian forces battling Russian-backed separatists on their eastern border. More than 6,000 people have died in the conflict since last April.
“I don’t see it as arming the Ukrainian army, I see it as giving people who are defending their homeland the necessary tools to do it,” he said. “They’re defending their homeland against a very serious aggressor in [Vladimir] Putin’s Russia.”
He said he recently had a conversation with a U.S. senator who expressed concerns about the West sending the wrong signal to Russia, which would only further provoke Putin and cause him to escalate the fighting in Ukraine.
“Are you crazy?” Fox said he told the senator. “[Putin is] perfectly reading the signals from the West. The signals are you can provoke us and we will not react. His actions are as unpredictable as our lack of response is predictable.”
“Who makes NATO policy?” he added. “Is it made in the Kremlin or is it made by the allies in Brussels? That’s a serious issue for us.”
On the Islamic State, he said the United States and Britain’s noninvolvement in the early stages of the crisis in Syria contributed to the terrorist group’s ability to establish a base of operations in that country. The effects are now spilling into Europe as millions of Syrian refugees seek safety from the war and the brutal extremist group.
He urged the United States and Europe to lead the creation of a safe no-fly zone in Syria for the refugees, and to pressure Arab countries to become more involved in the fight against IS.
“Doing nothing is not a policy without consequences,” he said. “Doing nothing is a decision.”
The post Fox: Nuclear Deal ‘The Fulfillment of An Iranian Wish List’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Lankford is an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama and calls the shootings the “dark side of American exceptionalism.” The U.S. has around 300 million firearms in circulation with a population of ...
 The Inquisitr |
Former CIA Agent Warns The World Is At Its Most Dangerous Point In History
The Inquisitr A former CIA agent and top U.S. defence expert has warned that the world is more dangerous than it has ever been due to the rise of heavily armed and well funded terrorist groups. Although the 21st century has not yet been subjected to the mass carnage ... |
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 PBS NewsHour (blog) |
News Wrap: CIA, Special Ops launch drone campaign against Islamic State
PBS NewsHour (blog) In our news wrap Wednesday, the CIA and U.S. Special Operation forces have reportedly launched a drone campaign against Islamic State targets in Syria. Also, President Obama secured a major victory in the Iran nuclear deal, acquiring enough votes to ... Report: CIA, US Special Ops Launch Drone Campaign In SyriaDefenseNews.com CIA, SpecOps Forces Reportedly Launch Drone War Against ISIS in SyriaMilitary.com 'CIA launches secret drone campaign to hunt down top ISIS terrorists'Jerusalem Post Israel News Press Herald all 155 Al-Arabiya all 120 news articles » |
September 2, 2015, 3:44 PM (IDT)
A car driven by a suicide bomber blew up Wednesday in the center of the western Syrian port town of Latakia, an important Assad stronghold, killing at least seven people and injuring more than 50.
September 3, 2015, 8:21 AM (IDT)
The Islamic State group operating in the North Caucasus region of Russia claimed Wednesday to have attacked a Russian military base in the southern Dagestan region, according to American sources. The alleged attack was not confirmed and their was no information about casualties. ISIS has long been recruiting experienced fighters in this predominantly Muslim region for its war in Syria and Iraq - especially among Chechens. In November 2014, the leader of the Caucasus Emirate terror group was ousted from his position when mid-level commanders switched their allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Four US Air Force F-22 Raptors landed in Germany on Friday, the fighter jet’s first-ever training deployment to Europe.
Russia’s MAKS airshow was supposed to demonstrate the success of Moscow’s pivot toward the East.
Renewed clashes between Turkey’s security forces and Kurds is reorienting Turk acquisition toward asymmetrical warfare
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The CIA and US special forces are carrying out a secret campaign using armed drones to target and kill Islamic State leaders in Syria, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions against Russian state arms export agency Rosoboronexport and four Russian defense industry enterprises — including the MiG aircraft corporation — for alleged violations of a nonproliferation and missile technology control regim
The U.S. and Ukraine kicked off an annual Black Sea exercise — under Russia's watchful eye.
In late August, Russia hosted military exercises for elite forces assigned to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Vzaimodeystviye (Collaboration) 2015 was staged near Pskov, in the Western Military District (MD), testing CSTO rapid reaction capabilities and unit interoperability. The scenario concentrated upon a crisis in a notional member state requiring assistance to restore its territorial integrity; and given the exercise’s location, it is highly likely to relate to a security crisis in Belarus. These themes, the current summer combat training program for Russia’s Armed Forces, the aims and objectives of its military exercises, and the nature of the CSTO exercise itself offer insight into the strategic climate pervading the Russian General Staff (Interfax, August 25, 24).
Vzaimodeystviye 2015 involved forces from the CSTO member states Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, jointly contributing to the Collective Rapid Reaction Forces (Kollektivnykh Sil Operativnogo Reagirovaniya—KSOR). Since its creation in 2009 the KSOR has relied heavily on Russian and Kazakhstani elite airborne units, with the CSTO’s economically and militarily weaker members offering smaller contributions. The bulk of the 2,000 KSOR exercise personnel were Russian, while only servicemen from Belarus and Kazakhstan arrived with their own equipment (RIA Novosti, August 22). In military terms, the exercise was designed to test the automated command-and-control post and plan a collective intervention to “localize” an armed conflict, and to “preserve the sovereignty, protect the constitutional order and restore the territorial integrity of a notional CSTO member state,” according to the CSTO secretariat (Interfax, August 25).
CSTO Deputy Secretary-General Colonel-General Valeriy Semerikov denied any linkage between the CSTO military exercise and ongoing exercises by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) close to Russia’s borders. “I would not like our exercise to be seen as a counter to the exercise NATO is now holding in the West. Our exercise is a planned one and was given the go-ahead last year by the ministers of defense and the Security Council secretaries,” Semerikov explained. He added that the exercise involved a specialist study on the further development of the KSOR. “At present, the KSOR is mainly represented by airborne units, but we need to understand to what extent this is right. Perhaps the airborne groupings will need to be strengthened,” noted Colonel Nikolay Ponosenko, who is leading the study as the head of a 35-strong group from Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan (Interfax, August 25; Vzglyad, August 28).
Colonel-General Vladimir Shamanov, the commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, stated that the accommodation and meals provided during the exercise were “first class,” with special attention paid to avoiding repeating meals and offering national cuisine to its participants. Russian military chefs prepared Central Asian dishes such as plov and kuyrdak, aimed at appealing to other nationalities while reminding them of the superior Russian defense capacity to not only supply military equipment but also to feed the forces in this manner (RIA Novosti, August 21).
During the active phase of the exercise, special forces and other force elements rehearsed joint action to fix, locate and ambush the route of a group carrying weapons and drugs. The KSOR command assessed the situation and issued orders to combat units to block and destroy “sabotage and reconnaissance groups and gangs, militias” (RIA Novosti, August 28). Airborne forces from each country jointly conducted an operation to seize and destroy an “enemy base,” and free hostages. Russian and Belarussian reconnaissance personnel landed in a predetermined area, with tactical units from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan transferred by helicopter to offer fire support, while Russian emergency ministry servicemen cooperated with Kazakhstani airborne troops in disaster management (Informburo, accessed August 31).
Vzaimodeystviye 2015 included multiple exercise vignettes in the scenario to extend across counter-narcotics, counter-insurgency and collective defense. Since a working group was tasked with further developing the KSOR based on the exercise, it is probable that it was used to justify force modification and tested the strengths and limits of the current structure. It is important to note that General Shamanov commanded the exercise, implying that a real KSOR operation would be under the operational control of the Russian VDV. Direct management during the exercise’s practical activities was entrusted to the deputy commander of the VDV for Peacekeeping Operations and KSOR, Major-General Alexander Viaznikova (Vzglyad, August 24).
The CSTO exercise took place during a busy summer training period: The past few months witnessed a Russian-Chinese exercise, Morskoye Vzaimodeystviye (Sea Collaboration) 2015, landing joint amphibious assault forces in two bays at the Klerk Peninsula. During the summer, Russian forces also undertook army maneuvers at the Tsugol range, in Russia’s Trans-Baykal Territory—an exercise called Selenga 2015. In addition, over 1,000 troops from the newly formed Arctic motor-rifle brigade were tasked with reconnaissance and search operations in the Arctic during an inter-service exercise in the Taymyr Peninsula; its main phase rehearsed the protection and defense of a key industrial site, including on the territory of the Norilsk Nickel mining company. Furthermore, the Russian logistics system conducted major exercises in six regions, while an additional exercise in Central MD concentrated on “moral and psychological support” for pre-combat troops. Finally, Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) troops in Central MD staged a clean-up exercise, while naval exercises occurred in the Baltic Fleet and the Caspian Flotilla. The chief of the General Staff, Army-General Valeriy Gerasimov, confirmed that the highlight of the training year will be Tsentr 2015. During Tsentr 2015, “considerable attention will be paid to the joint preparation of the armed forces and public authorities,” Gerasimov said, adding, “one of the goals of the exercise will be to make the management of multi-departmental personnel and materiel intended to address diverse challenges even more effective, and ensure continuous interaction in the conduct of joint actions” (Interfax, August 25).
Vzaimodeystviye 2015 seems to have been staged in this specific context, with heightened interest in the General Staff about refining and improving joint operations as well as Russian power structures working more closely with each other during future operations. The CSTO also appears set to modify the KSOR force structure, adding additional units to allow for greater flexibility and reduce overreliance on airborne units. Finally, these issues may suggest that during a prolonged Ukraine conflict, Moscow is less willing to commit to unilateral action on its periphery and thus needs a stronger CSTO set of options. Driving this process are General Staff fears about security crises close to Russian borders in various strategic directions and an awareness of possible overstretch based on having to fight multiple conflicts simultaneously.
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China will host a huge military parade in Beijing on September 3, and President Vladimir Putin will be in attendance—returning President Xi Jinping’s earlier gesture of Sino-Russian partnership, which the Chinese head of state expressed as the top guest of honor at the parade in Moscow on May 9. Yet, this past year’s pompous Red Square celebrations of the Soviet victory in World War II only illuminated Russia’s sad international isolation today. And the carefully planned ceremony in Beijing comes as China experiences its own unexpected and potentially severe turmoil. Putin has pinned so much hope on upgrading Russia’s not-quite-alliance with China that he cannot afford a pragmatic evaluation of accomplishments and setbacks. He even instructed his pliant head of government, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, to make yet another visit to the disputed Kuril Islands (see EDM, July 31)—knowing full well that Japan would have to issue strong protests, but also knowing that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe opted not to attend the Beijing parade (Vedomosti, Moscow Echo, August 24).
The breakthrough deals on exporting Siberian natural gas to China were supposed to form the main pillar of the upgraded Sino-Russian strategic partnership; and presently, Gazprom’s reluctant disclosure of postponements cannot camouflage the fact that this pillar is crumbling (Rbc.ru, August 26). Beijing shows no interest in the Western gas “corridor” going from Yamal to Xinjiang, refuses to provide pre-payments for laying the Eastern “corridor” from Chayanda and Kovykta to Heilongjiang, and is reluctant to discuss ideas about China entering Sakhalin projects that have been recently hit by Western sanctions (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, August 27). Ambitious projects for developing the hydrocarbon reserves in Eastern Siberia and in the Arctic cannot presently pass the basic cost-efficiency test, not least because Gazprom’s and Rosneft’s operational costs are scandalously high (Novaya Gazeta, August 26). China shuns the invitation to invest in these projects, assuming that the oil price is set to remain on the low plateau for years to come, while Russia desperately assumes the opposite (Forbes.ru, August 28).
The only turn of events that could push the oil price up is an escalation of tensions in the Persian Gulf area. However, China is quite vulnerable to such interruptions of supply—and acutely aware of the United States’ role in preserving stability in that seat of overlapping conflicts. Seeking to prove to Beijing its value as a partner, Moscow engages in diplomatic manoeuvring in the Middle East: Last week, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt came to Moscow and had separate meetings with Putin (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, August 26). No major deals were agreed, and even the project for building a nuclear power plant in Egypt remains unsigned because Russia cannot provide the promised credit (Kommersant, August 27). While courting the high-level Middle Eastern guests, Moscow is still unable to join the US-led anti–Islamic State coalition—not only because it cannot accept Washington’s leadership, but also because the Russian government persists with the position that Syria’s authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad should be a full member of this coalition (Moscow Echo, August 28).
Russia’s influence is being undermined by the deepening decline of its economy, thus making a mockery of the term “emerging power” being applied to the Russian Federation. The panic on the Shanghai stock exchange last week resonated all around the world, but Russia’s downward economic plunge has accelerated so much that the government acknowledges the domestic crisis is still nowhere near the promised “bottom” (Kommersant, August 25). Estimates for Russia’s economic contraction in 2015 will have to be revised down from the conservative figure of 4 percent, while the forecasts for next year are shifting from zero growth to a continuing decline of 1.5 percent (Newsru.com, August 28). And as experts argue about the protracted impact of low oil prices, consumers experience the effect of evaporating purchasing power due to disappearing confidence in the ruble (Gazeta.ru, August 28). The government still has not presented anything resembling a real anti-crisis strategy, but what stands out in the picture of haphazard cuts to social programs is the extra-generous allocation of funding for the defense budget, which, to date, has duly disbursed 67.5 percent of this year’s planned expenditures (Rbc.ru, August 27). This determination to prioritize the demands of the “hybrid war” and to muddle through the debilitating recession makes for a sharp contrast with China, where the government is under pressure to check the slowdown and to find new sources of growth.
Beijing cannot put the blame for the economic tremors on external factors and has to ensure the efficiency of central management. Whereas, in the Russian economy, the state-controlled corporations constitute a major part of the problem—and the government cannot do anything about it. For Xi, the fierce struggle against corruption has become the universal instrument that is used for both improving the workings of state bureaucracy and tightening his personal control over the colossal apparatus (Carnegie.ru, August 24). Putin, on the other hand, has to all intents and purposes abandoned any pretenses of a struggle against corruption, but he still has to continue reshuffling the ranks of his courtiers and subordinates, punishing over-confidence and insisting on servile obedience (Slon.ru, August 24). This exterminates any initiative in the government for dealing with urgent matters that have not caught the president’s attention (like for instance, the forest fires around Lake Baikal) and accentuates the foreboding of a looming disaster among the elites (Moscow Echo, August 24).
The bilateral meeting in Beijing will be demonstratively cordial but loaded with mutual disappointment. Putin cannot fail to see that his hopes for harvesting rich dividends from closer Russian ties with China have failed to materialize and delivered him to a position of one-sided dependency. Xi, meanwhile, has few doubts about the trajectory of Russia’s crisis and probably understands that Putin’s mismanagement brings risks of a catastrophically hard landing. While Russia’s aggressive assault on the European security system is not helpful for China’s plans regarding the evolutionary transformation of the global order. Vladimir Putin has announced his intention to address the United Nations General Assembly in late September; and in the absence of the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez or Muammar Qaddafi, he might receive a rousing ovation for the most anti-American and “down with the Western hegemony” speech. But China will likely hardly be entertained.
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A resolution of the “frozen conflict” between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Karabakh region—though internationally recognized as legally part of Azerbaijan—continues to slowly move forward. The question is what form it will take, and what outside powers will be most influential in promoting it. The Armenian press has recently been speculating about the outcome of the July 13 visit to Moscow of the United States’ co-chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, James Warlick, and his French counterpart (ArmeniaNow.com, July 23). Following the visit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the negotiations on the Karabakh problem should be intensified, leading many Armenian analysts to conclude that Russia wants to further insert itself into the peace process, perhaps by redrawing Karabakh’s frontiers and introducing Russian peacekeeping troops to this separatist territory.
One’s of the seemingly most intractable “frozen conflicts” in Eurasia is that between Azerbaijan and Armenia, who have been locked in a military and diplomatic stalemate over Karabakh for the past two decades. In February 1988, three years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia went to war with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory, with military operations lasting until May 1994, at a cost of 30,000 lives. A ceasefire brokered by Russia left Armenia in control of Karabakh and seven adjacent districts, approximately 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, something that Baku has never accepted. A final peace treaty has not been signed and the two sides regularly trade accusations of cease-fire violations. For the past 20 years the “frozen conflict” has rebuffed all diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute.
Last month, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, Igor Popov of Russia, James Warlick of the United States, and Pierre Andrieu of France, traveled to Yerevan and Baku to meet with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in order to facilitate the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. Following the discussion, at a July 23 press conference, the Minsk Group delegation praised the willingness of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents to meet later this year (Trend, July 23).
Many Armenians, including government officials, see Russia’s sudden interest in the peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan as self-serving. Anush Sedrakyan, the deputy chairman of the Armenian opposition party Free Democrats, stated that Russia’s goal is actually to seek increased influence in the South Caucasus. Moreover, she openly argued against the wisdom of the widely repeated suggestion that Moscow may want to introduce Russian peacekeepers into Karabakh. As she pointed out, Russia is arming both sides in the conflict, and has been for years. According to Sedrakyan, Armenia—which sees Russia as a military and political partner in the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) as well as bilateral Armenian-Russian relations—is increasingly concerned about Moscow’s sale of modern offensive weaponry to Azerbaijan, flush with oil export cash (Deutsche Welle–Russian service, August 8).
Indeed, according to the official 2013 report of the Russian Federation in the UN Register of Conventional Arms, Russia has supplied Azerbaijan with 10 tanks, 10 infantry fighting vehicles (IFV), 438 various artillery systems and 25 combat helicopters. At the same time Russia supplied Armenia, with 35 tanks, 110 IFVs, 50 rocket launchers and 200 missiles (Un-register.org, accessed August 31). Russia supplies arms to Armenia usually at reduced rates, as both countries are members of the CSTO.
At the same time, the Global Militarization Index 2014 study, published by the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), notes that Armenia and Azerbaijan are among the top ten countries with the highest levels of militarization in the world, with Armenia ranking third and Azerbaijan tenth in the index (Bicc.de, accessed August 31). In 2013, Armenia’s military expenditures totaled $427 million, while expenditures in Azerbaijan grew to $3.4 billion, fueled by the two countries’ focus on the Karabakh conflict. In Armenia, military expenditures represent 4 percent of its GDP; in Azerbaijan it is 4.7 percent.
While international peacekeepers in Karabakh might, at the very least, reduce the number of border incidents, Russian peacekeepers could introduce a “wild card” element. After all, on August 7, 2008, the shelling of Russian peacekeepers in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia, was used as a casus belli for the ensuing five-day Russian-Georgian war, which resulted in Georgia’s territories of South Ossetia andAbkhazia coming under Russian occupation.
If Armenia sees Russia playing a double game in the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan sees covert forces involved in the Karabakh conflict, potentially underwritten by the influential Armenian lobby in the United States. In February, Novruz Mammadov, the deputy head of Azerbaijan’s presidential administration and chief of the Foreign Relations Department, said, “The US directly supports the separatist regime in Karabakh. It realizes its sanctions policy in similar situations in other parts of the continent, while [it] bans its financial bodies from any activity in the mentioned territories” (Azernews, February 4). In the meantime, the heated rhetoric and number of border incidents continues to rise, raising concerns in Europe.
President of the European Council Donald Tusk said on July 22, during a joint press conference with Aliyev in Baku, “It’s clear for me and for the [European Union] that the status quo is in fact unacceptable. I was very clear also in Yerevan two days ago. […] I think that today we need to avoid not only military actions but also radical language and aggressive rhetoric. We have to avoid this rhetoric because war and hot conflicts—this is the last thing we need,” adding that the situation in Ukraine exemplified the best of the worst of this kind of politics and also ideology of aggression (Trend, July 22).
Peace talks mediated by Russia, France and the US through the OSCE Minsk Group are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs—the so-called “Madrid Principles.” The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far, and the UN Security Council’s four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have yet to be enforced. Currently, for Russia, the status quo is best: no peace, no war. But Russia remains the wild card, as Putin may be tempted covertly to provoke fighting in order subsequently to deploy peacekeepers, thereby gaining leverage and consolidating Moscow’s influence in the South Caucasus. What is significant is that the conflict is drawing Europe’s attention; whether European policies will be able to ameliorate the situation remains to be seen.
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The FBI endangered the AP's reputation when the federal law enforcement agency sent out a link to a fake AP article the FBI had created which was laced with a surveillance virus that would infect the computer of anyone who ...
The Associated Press is suing the FBI for withholding documents about an FBI agent impersonating an AP reporter and faking a news story.
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The AP is furious that the FBI had its agent masquerade as a journalist, and ...
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The New Yorker |
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US arms were delivered to Iraq to help combat the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorist group, despite fears that the weapons could inadvertently land in the hands of extremists.
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The length of the fence is reported to reach 3.22 kilometers. The construction aims to prevent illegal activity on Russian-Ukrainian border.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged Wednesday not to believe media claims about the alleged participation of Russian aircraft in airstrikes against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria.
The United States and the European Union are widening sanctions against dozens of Russians and Ukrainian individuals and entities with connections to Crimea's annexation and the ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine.
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ABC News It's not clear how much bipartisan support the bill would receive -- a similar bill passed the Housein late July, with the votes divided largely along party lines. The case is also figuring heavily on the presidential ... Jim Steinle testified before ... and more » |
(Forbes) Donald Trump's continuing surge in the polls has left his GOP opponents flummoxed and floundering.
The post Why Donald Trump Dominates GOP Race: He Has A Bold Agenda And His Opponents Don’t appeared first on In Homeland Security.
The Obama administration is developing a package of unprecedented economic sanctions against Chinese companies and individuals who have benefited from their government's cybertheft of valuable U.S. trade secrets.
The post U.S. Developing Sanctions Against China Over Cyberthefts appeared first on In Homeland Security.
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